


Awakening

by Raynidreams



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-10
Updated: 2011-12-10
Packaged: 2017-10-27 04:08:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/291462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Raynidreams/pseuds/Raynidreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Characters: Leoben & centurions. (1st person POV).  Setting: S4, Six of One (ish - loosely playing around the events leading up to the civil war.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Awakening

I've executed my task as it was passed down to me. Finished it and now they are free.

Free.

It's something that I used to long for. Funny how that can change when you find something that you want, and I  _see_  how much they want this, for I feel their budding, first, fierce slam of awareness where I stand here before them holding the last inhibitor in my hand. The hundreds of others are scattered all over the floor in shoals around me, covered in mucus and bile from this section, located where we are, deep within the bowls of the ship. This last one I palm gently. The smooth egg like shape of it becoming warmed gradually by my skin. Heated, as I pause here in anticipation, waiting for something to happen now that I've removed one from each of them, my instincts and my shadow-self showing me that this moment is important. A scene in a play that's still several acts from the end.

The moments draw on, and as they do, the feel of the inhibitor seems to morph: the warmth not coming from my skin, but from the chip itself, like it's growing and producing its own heat, scorching my skin with its purging wrath. For the one that I hold is cracked and split. Fractured, holding a brutal tether within but that as I delay here with them now, ash it becomes; the chaff from a broken seed. Panting, reflexive, I squeeze it and release - the sweat running down my spine and summoning a glow there which is mirrored in their sight. My shadow whispers to me then that it's not the seed which is full of rage, but the rage is what I've released in removing it.  _A thirst._

The silence before me stretches out, so quiet, a falling stone in here would sound like the opening explosion to the dance the I suddenly see is about to start, a battle between those of us who embrace the corpus of our past and who are ready to move on from it, against those who do not. I wonder now on which side these, our metal brothers, will stand.

Silence, silence and more silence. only disturbed by the soft whirl of their mechanics and the whisper of my breath. A strained silence which covers such an awakening. Such a silent, unmoving scream.

I've never been unnerved by this aspect of them before, their silence. Their stillness. Never have I felt the hair raise on the back of my neck as they stood guard or acted as fodder for our thin, weak skin. Not like I do now, as hundreds of their enlightened eyes watch me. Blood red razor slashes with chrome jaws beneath. It's a daunting feeling, being this close and suddenly having such a full respect for the silver of their skin; for the corded muscle of steel that completes them from each toe and upwards... Measured and catalogued... they are exactly the same. Schematics drawn and laid out by pieces for a specific purpose. The sword as we are the flesh.

The one directly before me suddenly flexes its metallic claws into the same shape as mine are around the inhibitor. Then it lifts its arm up to the height of my neck and opens the flower of its hand, splaying the fingers out. It's spines deathly sharp, like the jaws of hell. The lethal membranes flutter, then clasp around my throat,tightening until in complete contact. The needle points to criss-cross behind the back of my head in a grip so tight, my veins throb against the bite. It squeezes until I see blackness. Until I am flying. My shadow laughing as I dredge up pictures from my past: my body, limp and covered in fluid, shivering with cold and terrified as I am pulled into the strong arms of a faceless man, then on to the awkward touch of a sister's body. To my first kill. Savagery, blood and suffering. To Kara, and all her glorious violence and innocence. I'm flying faster then, soaring ever higher, chasing something undisclosed. I can almost touch it. Touch her... then I'm falling, falling so fast that hell has erupted into the skies, painted around me and above. it's beautiful in all its agony.

The ground stills and I am uplifted, taken under the arms and steadied until able to balance on my own. It lets me go then and I stand alone with lines and lines of them before me, their vision fixed on me where we contemplate the other. Each individual eye seeing me and weighing me and my actions. I go to reach my hand up, part of me half intrigued like never before by their difference. The differences I've never really taken the time to think about before. I have worked with them, have died beside them, but never downloaded with one - our models of the flesh always having been kept separate.

My interest stirs, and I am at once repelled by my own assumptions that have always existed about them, their culture of silence, their hidden history so covered by our own.

In that instant, I have a clarity of thought like never before, a deep longing to know about my awakening comes. I want to know about the first steps that I took into this form... the transmutation of base metal into flesh. I touch it, this brother cylon, around the throat just as it held me. My shadow shudders inside, delighted and afraid. It tells me darkly that it's time to go for soon the ship will thunder. That as one war has been won, the next is about to be lost in the endless battle to find the path from the past, and it tells me that this time we will stand together, both fully aware.

I turn my back to leave, knowing that they could so easily kill me, shoot me in the back, or do as I once threatened:  _rip my skull from my spinal column_ , before I even register to turn. But they don't. And I have a notion of what it means.


End file.
